Beauty and Happiness in the City vs. Country

Whenever you walk past the tabloids in the grocery store or at a news stand you always get the same idea. Money and beauty are important but the money won’t make you happy like being beautiful will. A new study has proven that beauty is more important as long as it’s in the city, but in the country is doesn’t really matter.

For women in the city their appearance is everything reported researchers. Their happiness is highly dependent on their physical appearance and how others see them. But in the country looks aren’t important because they realize that there are more important things that influence their happiness.

In the city women that are “the most attractive got a lot of bang for their appearance buck. And if you were even slightly below average, you were very clearly worse off” says Victoria Plaut an assistant professor of psychology at University of California, Berkeley. There was a tie between money, beauty, and happiness in the city but for women in rural areas there wasn’t a strong link between good looks and happiness. And there was even a trend for slightly heavier women to be even happier in the country.

Plaut and her colleagues interviewed 257 women in the city and 330 from the country to get these results. The women were asked to rate their happiness in life on a scale of one to 10 with one being the lowest and 10 highest. Then they asked for the women’s body measurements. And they found that the smaller the measurements the more attractive the women felt and seemed to be to others, which boosted their happiness level.

In the country there isn’t as much emphasis or pressure to be beautiful like there is in the city. In the country women tend to be more secure with themselves and don’t worry about their looks. They are more concerned about being loyal and true to themselves. Whereas women in the city can’t even step out of their apartment without being dressed up; but in the country anyone can go to the store in their overalls and boots covered in mud and no one would care.

There isn’t a pressure to fit in because they’re already friends and accepted by most people in town. There’s a support system in the country because everyone knows each other and in the city the system is lacking because no one knows each other. So there is more of a pressure to fit in.

For women in the country beauty isn’t everything; it’s more about what’s inside. On the other hand women in the city are much more obsessed about being beautiful because that is what sets them apart from others and gets them attention. Money doesn’t mean happiness for women in the city but looks do.